The quiet financial dependence hiding inside India’s dual-income households.  Every weekend, another Financial Independence story appears on YouTube. Someone retired at forty-five. Another left corporate life to move back to their hometown. Another now spends their mornings trekking or gardening in the mountains instead of attending project meetings on mute. Yes, some of these stories…

Use this simple spreadsheet to review and audit your goal-based investment portfolios. Over the years, we recognised the need for a tool beyond financial planning and portfolio value/return tracking. A financial planning calculator tells you the target corpus for a goal and the investment amount required. A portfolio tracker only tells you the current corpus…

I was recently asked the titular question at an event. The person has a target asset allocation of 20% international equity, 40% Indian equity, and 40% fixed income (the international equity allocation is 33.3% of the overall equity allocation). He wants to know how to rebalance and manage this portfolio in future. First of all,…

In Part 1, I wrote about the assumption embedded in almost every retirement plan: that the person managing the corpus at seventy-five will think and decide the way the person who built it did at forty-five. The research suggests that is not a safe assumption. And yet almost no retirement planning framework addresses it directly….

“How Much Should You Save Monthly Based on Your Age and Income?” I was asked this question in an interview—a discussion. We shall save and invest together here. I think the short but unpleasant answer is:  as much as possible! This does not mean you resign yourself to saying, “I can only invest this much…

The cost inflation index for the financial year 2026-2027 is 384, representing a 2.13% increase. We compile 46 years of cost inflation index data to understand the devastating consequences of inflation and why our singular focus should be on beating inflation for our long term goals. The cost inflation index (CII) is not a measure…

We plan for inflation, longevity, and market crashes. We rarely plan for our own decline. For the last five years, I have spent a significant amount of time thinking about retirement planning. Not just the numbers, but the assumptions underneath them. Like most DIY investors, I started with the obvious questions. How much corpus would…

A reader asks, How should I invest to secure the future of my newborn child? Our investing mantra is process-first, products-last.  We create a financial plan suited to our needs, considering realistic inflation estimates. Then, we consider the necessary risk for the goal, the risk we can emotionally handle and determine an asset allocation (mix of…

A reader recently asked, “Do Bond Markets Crash the Same Way Stocks Do?” We discuss the last time this happened in India. After the 2008 economic crisis, the Federal Reserve (the central bank of the US) started buying long-term government bonds and increased the money supply in the market. This increase in money supply led…

We spend Rs. 80,000 on a phone without losing much sleep over it. We pay a premium for a good school, a good doctor, and a good lawyer. But suggest paying Rs. 15,000 a year to a financial advisor and something shifts. The questions come up: what exactly are you charging for? Can’t I look…

Last month we launched NaviPlan: A Privacy-Focused Multi-asset Tracker and Goal Planner. This tool, developed by Gokul of Naviran Technologies in association with freefincal, can be used to track mutual funds, stocks, and FDs.  The user can tag these to financial goals and track their progress. The tool also provides options to lower risk via…

A reader asks, “All these years, you have taught us how to save and invest. I have saved and invested for the last 8 years, and I am truly scared when I hear about all the new types of scams. How do we safeguard our savings and investments in this era of Cyber scammers and…

Every time I talk about retirement planning – on stage, in interviews, etc.- I hear this line: “If we need a few crores* to retire, then most Indians will fall short”. * Sometimes the target corpus is seven crores, sometimes ten crores, sometimes 13-14 crores, depending on the question I am asked. There is nothing…

Retirement Was Never Supposed to Feel This Urgent. But Here We Are. Our parents had a version of retirement that mostly worked. You joined a company young, stayed long enough, built a provident fund or pension, and retired around 60 with some stability behind you. The system was not glamorous, but it was understandable. You…

Are you worried about whether you can afford that new phone or bike or car? Feeling guilty and tempted at the same time? Here is a simple way to find out affordability & organise finances so that you can responsibly buy stuff you love! Every time I go to a corporate money management session, I…